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Family Guy controversies
The American adult animated sitcom Family Guy has been the target of numerous taste and indecency complaints. The show is known to include offensive jokes including racial humor and violent, gory, and disturbing images.
Critics have targeted Family Guy's reliance on cutaway gags, panning the show for its characterization, excessive pop culture references and writing outside of these gags, and have unfavorably compared the show to contemporaries such as The Simpsons and Comedy Central's South Park; the latter has also parodied and criticized Family Guy in several episodes throughout its run. The show's dark humor and sexual themes have also led to backlash from special interest groups. The Parents Television Council (PTC) has attacked the series since its premiere, deeming it the "Worst TV Show of the Week" on at least 40 occasions, and filing complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Family Guy's frequent use of offensive jokes and satire has led to controversy. The jokes that receive controversy are often found in the cutaway gags. For example, in the episode "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire", Peter and a barbershop quartet sing and dance around the bed of a man with end-stage AIDS. The airing of this episode led to immediate backlash. This cutaway angered audience members and led to protests by several AIDS service organizations. In his 2006 book The Decency Wars: The Campaign to Cleanse American Culture, author Frederick S. Lane described Family Guy as among several television sitcoms that he believed were "aimed at the darker side of family life."
The Parents Television Council (PTC), a conservative non-profit watchdog group, has published critical views of Family Guy. In May 2000, in an email, the PTC launched a letter-writing campaign to the Fox network to persuade the network to cancel Family Guy. This followed the show's return from a long hiatus in its second season, due to what the PTC claimed were "strong advertiser resistance and low ratings". Family Guy made the PTC's 2000, 2005, and 2006 lists of "worst prime-time shows for family viewing", with over forty Family Guy episodes listed as "Worst TV Show[s] of the Week". This was due to profanity, animated nudity, and violence. The series was also named the worst show of the 2006–2007 season by the PTC. In addition, a live-action special hosted by series creator Seth MacFarlane and fellow voice actress Alex Borstein titled Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show was also named "Worst TV Show of the Week" by the PTC due to what it said were "disgusting sex jokes, crass Holocaust humor, cruel impersonations of deaf people, and loads of bleeped profanity."
The PTC has targeted Fox, criticizing the network for failing to include "S" (sexual content) and "V" (violence) descriptors in content ratings for some Family Guy episodes. The council has cautioned parents that due to the animation style, children might get attracted to the adult show. In order to prevent child viewing, the PTC has objected to Fox scheduling Family Guy during early prime time hours. Additionally, the council has asked Family Guy sponsors such as Wrigley Company and Burger King to stop advertising during the show as their products appeal to kids, due to the show's sexual content. The PTC president then became friends with Seth MacFarlane over a complaint about a 2015 episode.
The PTC, which has generated most of the indecency complaints received by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has filed formal FCC complaints against Family Guy episodes.
Family Guy's dark humor commonly involves religious activity, and has received criticism from religious people and groups as a result. In 1999, during the show's second season, Entertainment Weekly TV critic Ken Tucker criticized the show for being antisemitic. The same year, L. Brent Bozell III wrote that he believed the episode "Holy Crap" promoted anti-Catholicism, and was the only episode that was animated by Film Roman to face controversy. After that episode, Family Guy was pulled from the schedule, purportedly due to low ratings. The show briefly returned for one day in December with the following episode "Da Boom". The show was then dropped again for another few months, but returned in March to finish airing the second season.
The PTC has criticized what it perceives as Family Guy's negative treatment of religion, particularly if they portray God or Jesus Christ in a negative, sacrilegious way, concluding in its 2006 report Faith in a Box: Entertainment Television and Religion 2005-2006 that "mockery of God is a constant" on the show. For example, in the episode "The Courtship of Stewie's Father", there is a cutaway gag depicting God as a dirty old man having sex with a prostitute all while brushing off a teen-aged Jesus, who was seeking some help with his quarrel with Joseph. The Media Research Center, also founded by Bozell, was strongly critical of the 2014 episode "The 2000-Year-Old Virgin" in which Jesus emotionally cons people to have sex with their wives. In the same episode, Peter directs people to complain to the "Family Television Council", a thinly disguised reference to the PTC.
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Family Guy controversies
The American adult animated sitcom Family Guy has been the target of numerous taste and indecency complaints. The show is known to include offensive jokes including racial humor and violent, gory, and disturbing images.
Critics have targeted Family Guy's reliance on cutaway gags, panning the show for its characterization, excessive pop culture references and writing outside of these gags, and have unfavorably compared the show to contemporaries such as The Simpsons and Comedy Central's South Park; the latter has also parodied and criticized Family Guy in several episodes throughout its run. The show's dark humor and sexual themes have also led to backlash from special interest groups. The Parents Television Council (PTC) has attacked the series since its premiere, deeming it the "Worst TV Show of the Week" on at least 40 occasions, and filing complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
Family Guy's frequent use of offensive jokes and satire has led to controversy. The jokes that receive controversy are often found in the cutaway gags. For example, in the episode "The Cleveland-Loretta Quagmire", Peter and a barbershop quartet sing and dance around the bed of a man with end-stage AIDS. The airing of this episode led to immediate backlash. This cutaway angered audience members and led to protests by several AIDS service organizations. In his 2006 book The Decency Wars: The Campaign to Cleanse American Culture, author Frederick S. Lane described Family Guy as among several television sitcoms that he believed were "aimed at the darker side of family life."
The Parents Television Council (PTC), a conservative non-profit watchdog group, has published critical views of Family Guy. In May 2000, in an email, the PTC launched a letter-writing campaign to the Fox network to persuade the network to cancel Family Guy. This followed the show's return from a long hiatus in its second season, due to what the PTC claimed were "strong advertiser resistance and low ratings". Family Guy made the PTC's 2000, 2005, and 2006 lists of "worst prime-time shows for family viewing", with over forty Family Guy episodes listed as "Worst TV Show[s] of the Week". This was due to profanity, animated nudity, and violence. The series was also named the worst show of the 2006–2007 season by the PTC. In addition, a live-action special hosted by series creator Seth MacFarlane and fellow voice actress Alex Borstein titled Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex's Almost Live Comedy Show was also named "Worst TV Show of the Week" by the PTC due to what it said were "disgusting sex jokes, crass Holocaust humor, cruel impersonations of deaf people, and loads of bleeped profanity."
The PTC has targeted Fox, criticizing the network for failing to include "S" (sexual content) and "V" (violence) descriptors in content ratings for some Family Guy episodes. The council has cautioned parents that due to the animation style, children might get attracted to the adult show. In order to prevent child viewing, the PTC has objected to Fox scheduling Family Guy during early prime time hours. Additionally, the council has asked Family Guy sponsors such as Wrigley Company and Burger King to stop advertising during the show as their products appeal to kids, due to the show's sexual content. The PTC president then became friends with Seth MacFarlane over a complaint about a 2015 episode.
The PTC, which has generated most of the indecency complaints received by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), has filed formal FCC complaints against Family Guy episodes.
Family Guy's dark humor commonly involves religious activity, and has received criticism from religious people and groups as a result. In 1999, during the show's second season, Entertainment Weekly TV critic Ken Tucker criticized the show for being antisemitic. The same year, L. Brent Bozell III wrote that he believed the episode "Holy Crap" promoted anti-Catholicism, and was the only episode that was animated by Film Roman to face controversy. After that episode, Family Guy was pulled from the schedule, purportedly due to low ratings. The show briefly returned for one day in December with the following episode "Da Boom". The show was then dropped again for another few months, but returned in March to finish airing the second season.
The PTC has criticized what it perceives as Family Guy's negative treatment of religion, particularly if they portray God or Jesus Christ in a negative, sacrilegious way, concluding in its 2006 report Faith in a Box: Entertainment Television and Religion 2005-2006 that "mockery of God is a constant" on the show. For example, in the episode "The Courtship of Stewie's Father", there is a cutaway gag depicting God as a dirty old man having sex with a prostitute all while brushing off a teen-aged Jesus, who was seeking some help with his quarrel with Joseph. The Media Research Center, also founded by Bozell, was strongly critical of the 2014 episode "The 2000-Year-Old Virgin" in which Jesus emotionally cons people to have sex with their wives. In the same episode, Peter directs people to complain to the "Family Television Council", a thinly disguised reference to the PTC.
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